Eri-TV

Eri-TV (Eritrean Television) is the state-owned television broadcaster of Eritrea, headquartered in Asmara and operated directly by the Ministry of Information. Established in January 1993, two years after Eritrea’s de-facto independence and six months before formal statehood, Eri-TV is by law the country’s sole domestic television broadcaster; no private television has ever been licensed and the 1996 press law expressly bans private broadcast media. The network operates three channels: Eri-TV 1 (international satellite distribution in Tigrinya, Arabic, English and Tigre, with limited programming in Italian, Amharic and Somali); Eri-TV 2 (domestic-only, primarily educational); and Eri-TV 3 (sports). Eri-TV 1 broadcasts 24 hours a day via satellite and online streaming, reaching an estimated 1–2 million weekly viewers including a substantial share of the Eritrean diaspora.

Media assets

Television: EriTV 1, EriTV 2, EriTV 3

Ownership and governance

Eri-TV is wholly owned and operated by the Ministry of Information of Eritrea. There is no independent governing board, no public service charter, and no statutory framework establishing institutional autonomy. The Minister of Information has sole authority over senior editorial and managerial appointments, all of which are reportedly made on the basis of political loyalty to the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).

The Minister of Information is Yemane Gebremeskel (also spelled Yemane G. Meskel), in post since 11 March 2015. His decade-long tenure makes him one of the longest-serving information ministers in Africa and reflects the broader stability of the Eritrean cabinet, which has seen minimal turnover under President Isaias Afwerki (in office since 1993). Gebremeskel maintains a high-profile presence on X (@hawelti) where he has emerged as the government’s principal English-language spokesperson on regional affairs, particularly on the escalating tensions with Ethiopia over Red Sea access through 2025–2026.

The first head of Eri-TV after the 1993 launch was Seyoum Tsehaye, an Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) member and war journalist. Tsehaye was arrested on 21 September 2001 during the regime’s mass crackdown on journalists and has been held incommunicado without trial ever since, one of the longest-held journalists in the world. His case continues to be raised by Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Eritrean diaspora organisations as emblematic of the country’s media repression.

Source of funding and budget

Eri-TV is entirely financed from the Eritrean state budget through undisclosed Ministry of Information allocations. Eritrea publishes no national budget, no broadcaster financial statements, and no audited accounts; the country sits at the bottom of the Open Budget Index and is consistently rated among the world’s least fiscally transparent states. Limited commercial advertising was introduced into Eri-TV programming slots in February 2011, but no revenue figures have ever been published and advertising is understood to remain marginal.

The 6 February 2026 Ministry of Information annual assessment meeting reported that 90 percent of programmes planned for 2025 had been implemented, including migration to advanced media facilities, installation of static and mobile studios, transition from SD to HD production, and digitisation of archives. The full transition to HD distribution and several training programmes were flagged as not yet complete. No financial figures accompanied the report.

Editorial independence

Eri-TV has no editorial autonomy and no statutory protection of editorial independence. There is no independent media regulator in Eritrea: the Ministry of Information is simultaneously owner, operator and supervisor of all state media. Programming serves as the principal television vehicle for state messaging on national development, the indefinite national service programme, and the regime’s foreign policy positions, particularly on Ethiopia, the Tigray conflict, and Red Sea geopolitics. Investigative coverage of state institutions, criticism of the President or PFDJ, and dissenting political viewpoints are absent from the broadcast schedule.

Eritrea has no constitution in force (the 1997 ratified constitution has never been implemented) and no presidential elections have ever been held since independence. Reporters Without Borders ranked Eritrea 180th of 180 countries in its 2025 World Press Freedom Index, last in the world for the second consecutive year, with RSF describing the country as “one of the world’s largest prisons for journalists” and noting that at least 16 journalists remain imprisoned, several since the September 2001 crackdown. The Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2024 prison census similarly placed Eritrea among the worst jailers of journalists globally on a per-capita basis.

Through 2025–2026, Eri-TV’s output has been heavily shaped by the deteriorating Eritrea–Ethiopia relationship. Minister Gebremeskel’s public statements rejecting Ethiopian accusations of regional destabilisation and accusing Addis Ababa of seeking “unjustified war” have been amplified across all state media platforms, with Eri-TV serving as the principal audiovisual vector for the official narrative.

AI and digital policy

Eri-TV maintains active satellite, terrestrial, online and social media distribution. The Ministry’s online platform shabait.com syndicates Eri-TV news content alongside print and radio, and the Ministry maintains a Facebook page (~35,800 followers) and X presence. The 2025 facilities upgrade announced at the Ministry’s February 2026 assessment meeting indicates continued investment in production capability, including HD studios and archive digitisation. No AI policy, content-provenance commitment, or formal disclosure framework for AI-generated content has been published. There is no public statement on synthetic-media disclosure, automated translation between the broadcaster’s operating languages, or AI use in editorial workflows. Given the absence of any independent press freedom infrastructure in Eritrea, no external audit or verification mechanism exists for any aspect of Eri-TV’s digital operations.

April 2026